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EP03 Radioactive Pinball Podcast

The Pinball Studio Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 24m·analyzed·Jul 25, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.021

TL;DR

Arcade operator discusses inventory strategy, regional dealer partnership, and venue optimization.

Summary

Eric, owner of Radioactive Pinball Arcade in Aiken, South Carolina, discusses his arcade operations, recent game acquisitions (Galaxy, Rush (Pro)), and a new partnership with Marcos Specialties to serve as a showroom and sales hub for the region. The podcast covers arcade layout strategies, inventory management, game acquisition/trading tactics, and operational challenges like HVAC management in high-traffic venues.

Key Claims

  • Radioactive Pinball Arcade is partnering with Marcos Specialties to handle new game inventory and help move used inventory, allowing customers to play games before purchasing.

    high confidence · Eric, Radioactive Pinball Arcade owner, stated this as official as of the recording day

  • Eric targets maintaining around 90 games at Radioactive Pinball Arcade but is currently at 105, creating storage constraints.

    high confidence · Eric stated directly in conversation

  • Jason Grindle's Classic Game Rooms in Covington has the largest pinball inventory the speakers have encountered, with machines stacked three boxes high.

    high confidence · Both speakers corroborated this observation based on personal visits

  • Sonic is a Stern game that people have been requesting, and Eric has customers lined up to purchase it pending hands-on play.

    high confidence · Eric mentioned customers want to play Sonic before ordering; characterization of Sonic as generating pre-purchase interest

  • Game room temperature management is challenging; Eric's venue can heat up to nearly 80°F from a 60°F setting during crowded events due to AC limitations and door traffic.

    high confidence · Eric and host both described HVAC struggles at their respective venues

  • Eric has slowed game acquisitions significantly; expects to purchase 5-6 games in the current year versus previously buying every new Stern release.

    high confidence · Eric stated directly in conversation

  • Buck Hunter arcade cabinets with subscription-based content models cost approximately $5,000 more for a fully preloaded version.

    medium confidence · Host mentioned hearing this figure; not directly verified by Eric

  • Pinside is the preferred marketplace for buying/selling games within the pinball community, while Facebook yields lower-quality buyer pools.

    high confidence · Eric stated his preference and experience with both platforms

Notable Quotes

  • “We're trying to make ourselves kind of the hub, a hub for pinball and really just expand the hobby as much as we can.”

    Radioactive Pinball Arcade @ mid-episode — Expresses Eric's vision for expanding pinball accessibility through the Marcos Specialties partnership and arcade-based showroom strategy

  • “If there's somebody who's got more inventory than he does, wow... that place is fucking crazy.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ mid-episode — Emphasizes the exceptional scale of Classic Game Rooms' inventory, establishing it as a market benchmark for dealer capacity

  • “Buy games restored, don't restore games. I can't get to... I've got three playfields I need to change.”

    Eric @ late episode — Summarizes the financial and time burden of restoration work, revealing operational constraints at the arcade

  • “Every dollar I made went to payments... I got out of that hole, and I'm not getting back in it.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ mid-episode — Explains philosophical resistance to subscriptions and payment models, reflecting broader operator concerns about recurring costs

  • “I usually only find pinball people on Pinside... Facebook, it's someone trying to trade me their Jeep Cherokee and their Weber Grill for it.”

    Eric @ mid-episode — Illustrates marketplace dynamics and buyer quality differences between Pinside and Facebook, informing trading strategy

  • “You can come in and play it, then decide if you like it and buy it... we've got people that lined up already to buy Sonic.”

    Eric @ early-mid episode — Demonstrates the value proposition of the arcade-showroom hybrid model: reducing purchase friction through hands-on demos

  • “When one comes in, one goes. Usually.”

    Eric @ mid-episode — Illustrates tight inventory management philosophy at Radioactive Arcade

  • “I mean, pretty much I just go off of... if it's a ballet game, I want to play around a thousand bucks for it.”

Entities

Radioactive Pinball ArcadecompanyEricpersonMarcos SpecialtiescompanyClassic Game RoomsvenueJason GrindlepersonOld Town PinballvenueGame TerminalvenuePinball PalacevenuePinball Studio NetworkorganizationDavid Benkeperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Radioactive Arcade partners with Marcos Specialties to provide new inventory and use arcade as regional showroom, filling geographic gap between dealer networks (St. Augustine, Atlanta, Columbia)

    high · Eric confirmed 'official as of today' the Marcos partnership; positions arcade as sales hub and distribution point for new/used inventory in underserved area

  • ?

    venue_signal: Pinball arcades struggle with HVAC capacity during peak attendance; venues report AC unable to maintain temperature setpoint (60°F drops to ~80°F) during crowded events, requiring operational workarounds

    high · Both Eric and host described HVAC strain during tournaments; door traffic and game heat load compound issue; Eric considers adding secondary HVAC unit but faces historic preservation and physical venting constraints

  • ?

    operational_signal: High-traffic arcade venues report operational saturation at 90-105 machines; maintaining stock beyond capacity creates workflow bottlenecks in adjacent workshop/storage areas

    high · Eric targets ~90 machines but operates at 105, describing workshop as 'full again'; trades/sales are one-in-one-out to maintain operational space

  • $

    market_signal: Significant variation in dealer inventory models and capacity; some dealers (Classic Game Rooms) operate massive warehouse operations with hundreds of units stacked; others operate appointment-only showrooms (Old Town Pinball)

    high · Jason Grindle's Classic Game Rooms described as having unparalleled inventory; stacking practices three boxes high; contrasts with appointment-only models at Old Town and Game Terminal

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.057

0:00
Hey guys, real quick, I just wanted to mention some of the restructuring of the channel for the Pinball Studio podcast. If you haven't noticed, there's really three different shows that are currently coming on the channel. And originally, it was just supposed to be my show, My Journey into Pinball. And then we were going to do this separate show with my buddy David and Eric called Pin Talk. But then we found out it was easier that we all just did separate episodes. It was going to be way too hard to figure out when we were going to record and stuff. With that being said, I'm changing the name of the podcast channel to the Pinball Studio Network, mainly just because it's multiple different podcasts on the channel. So I will continue to do my journey into pinball, which is where I interview people and how they got into the hobby. Then we will do Pintalk with me and David Benke where we will kind of dabble more in the tournament side of things and code. And then we will also have Radioactive Pinball as the third show and that's where me and Eric talk about current topics that are going on and also what's going on at his arcade, Radioactive Arcade. Anyway, let's jump into today's episode and sorry for the long intro. Radioactive Pinball Everything going on at Radioactive Pinball Arcade in Aiken, South Carolina. Anyway, welcome back to the show, my friend. How's it going, Eric? Thanks, man. I'm doing great. I wanted to hear about your new games. I heard last time we spoke we were going to do a recording, but we didn't make it because you had some new games coming in. I was curious what you got. Yeah, yeah. I actually recorded with David the other day and we chatted about it a little bit. But yeah, I'll go over it. So I had Grand Slam for a long time. It's like an older Bally, actually a Midway Bally game, but it's a rare one that you don't really see very often. And I actually ended up selling that to a buddy in the club, and then I took that money and used part of it and bought a Stern Galaxy, which I'm now going over and trying to fix it up. And then I traded my Shadow for Rush Pro.
2:50
So, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's cool, man. Rush is a good game. Shadow is a great game. Shadow is one I've always wanted to get my hands on. Man, why didn't you buy mine? I've been trying to sell it for six months. Well, the problem is we spoke once before and I told you that we try to stay around 90 games is about where we try to stay. And we're at about 105 right now. I'm really I'm just too heavy on games right now. I don't have a lot of room to move, which is the problem. Shop's full, workshop's full again. Every time I clear that thing out, I'm like, oh, this is what heaven is like. I can actually walk in this place. I can move around. I have room to work on stuff. That doesn't last. I don't know. So it's pretty much the only games we pick up are ones that are just some kind of crazy deal you can't pass up or something new because the new stuff really moves people. I mean, we've gotten every epic classic game really that people have asked us about. There used to be people asking about, you guys need an Adam Sam. We got an Adam Sam. You need a Theater of Magic. I got a Theater of Magic. You need a Tales of the Ravion. We got all the ones that they asked for. But not a Shadow.

  • Eric uses a valuation framework: ~$1,000 for EM/Electromechanical games, $2,000-$3,000 for System 11, $3,000-$5,000 for WPC era machines.

    high confidence · Eric outlined his pricing approach explicitly

  • Game restoration rarely breaks even financially; Eric advises 'buy games restored, don't restore games' based on cost experience.

    high confidence · Eric described his restoration cost overruns and stated this principle directly

    • Eric @ late episode — Reveals valuation heuristics that inform acquisition decisions

    Erin
    person
    Galaxygame
    Rush (Pro)game
    Shadowgame
    Grand Slamgame
    Sonicgame
    Tales from the Cryptgame
    Star Trekgame
    Phantom of the Operagame
    Flash Gordongame
    Rollergamesgame
    Buck Huntergame
    Pac-Mangame
    Pinsideplatform
    The Addams Familygame

    collector_signal: Experienced collector/operator reducing acquisition velocity; Eric reports purchasing only 3-4 games annually vs. previously buying every new Stern release, indicating market maturation or portfolio completion

    high · Eric stated 'I've really slowed down this year... I'll probably buy five or six' vs. historical pattern of acquiring every Stern release and trading to fund purchases

  • $

    market_signal: Established pricing heuristics for vintage/classic games: EM ~$1K, System 11 $2-3K, WPC $3-5K; exceptions like Addams Family command premiums; valuations guide acquisition and trading decisions

    high · Eric outlined explicit pricing framework and acknowledged using experience-based intuition vs. market listings; notes 'I've been dabbling in it long enough to know what to buy'

  • $

    market_signal: Clear market segmentation: Pinside attracts dedicated pinball buyers/traders; Facebook attracts casual/non-specialist sellers offering low-value trades; pinball community strongly prefers Pinside for quality and buyer intent

    high · Eric prefers Pinside; describes Facebook as attracting off-topic trade offers (Jeep, Weber grill); uses Pinside's 60-90 day listing window to identify motivated sellers for trade opportunities

  • ?

    operational_signal: Experienced operators identify motivated sellers via marketplace listing age (60-90 days without sale); proactively initiate trades with sellers showing fatigue, improving deal outcomes vs. reactive response to inquiries

    high · Eric: 'I'll look at the end of the list and... this guy's been trying to sell this thing for a hot minute. Let's reach out and see if he'll do a trade... people may be getting fed up'

  • ?

    product_concern: Game restoration economics unfavorable for resale; buyers rarely disclose full restoration scope; operator costs exceed residual value; principle: 'buy restored, don't restore'

    high · Eric: 'I am yet to have bought a game from anybody where it actually met my standard... I usually always spend entirely too much money fixing up a game... buy games restored, don't restore games'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Playfield replacement work (new playfield installation) represents significant time bottleneck; Eric has 3 pending playfields unable to schedule due to capacity constraints

    high · Eric: 'I've got three playfields I need to change. I have all three playfields and I can't get to them... I don't have time to get to it'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Studio Network rebranded to accommodate three distinct podcast formats (My Journey into Pinball, Pin Talk, Radioactive Pinball), reflecting growing content depth and audience segmentation within pinball media

    high · Host announced restructuring of channel into three shows with distinct focuses (interviews, tournament/code, operator topics) to serve different community interests

  • ?

    venue_signal: Emerging hybrid arcade-retail model: venue operates as both public arcade and private/semi-private showroom where customers can trial games before purchase, reducing transaction friction for high-value items

    medium · Eric: customers already lined up to purchase Sonic 'but they both want to get their hands on it first'; comparison to potential arcade+sales floor concept mentioned by host's dealer; Game Terminal has separate sales room

    • 4:05
    Not a Shadow. I actually never had anybody ask for Shadow. But that's not what seems to really just drive people. When I say I've got, we've actually got a Sonic coming. So people have been asking over and over about that game. Are you guys getting one? You guys getting one? Well, it's finally official as of today that we are partnering with Marcos Specialties to start servicing kind of our area for game sales. So we're going to through Marcos Specialties, not a sub deal or anything. We just partner with them basically just helping them out with sales and stuff, and they help us out, and it works great. Will you have some games on hand in stock? Could it be a separate pickup point as well?
    4:51
    Yes, we're going to bring us games. They also get games on trade and stuff, so we're going to help them move some of their used inventory. And he's also, yes, going to bring us games new in box. That way, if we have somebody that shows up and wants to make a big impulse buy, then we're going to be like, man, we'll have your game in your living room today. So, yeah, that's pretty cool. We're excited about it, man. Yeah, that's awesome. It's going to be a really fun new adventure for us. And my wife, Erin, her background is in sales, and she really enjoys doing it. She's really great with people, and she really wants to kind of get back into that. And so this really gives her that high of trying to move product and stuff like that. So because that's her background. So she likes doing stuff like that. She has fun with it. If I ever worked in the pinball industry, that's actually what I'd prefer to do is just sales like sell games.
    5:53
    Aaron and I do so great together because we absolutely complement each other. I am awful at sales. I feel awkward doing it. I don't really want to. Now, I will. If somebody asks me my thoughts on a game or should tell me what or ask what I like about a game. Oh, man, that's awesome. Heck, yeah. But like trying to convince somebody to buy it. I'm the I'm not the great guy for that because I'm just like, you know, if you want it, cool, man, we hook you up. If not, I get it. You know, see, I've never had a lot of money. I've never bought it's a lot of money. Right about it. Yeah, I've never worked in sales for pinball or anything, but I've been involved with so many pinball deals, like in between helping my dealer sell a game or whatever, talking to somebody buying their first pinball machine and basically me setting up the whole deal for them and just me selling so many games over the years where that's kind of what I feel comfortable doing. I've sold so many games that I feel like I'd be halfway decent at it. I hate it. I don't know. I always feel bad. I feel like I'm... But I don't want to be a dealer. I don't want to be the head honcho. I just want to be like work on the side for someone and sell games. Well, that's the beauty of the relationship we have with Marcos is that they handle all that stuff. I don't have to go to Stern or whoever and negotiate pricing and however many games they have to buy to make certain deals. That's not our part in that. We just help them move the stuff out the door when he gets it in. That's the way to go. And like I say, Erin, everything that I don't like to do, Erin likes to do. And everything she can't do or doesn't like to do, I do. That just works out. That's the stuff I'm interested in. Working on the games, she doesn't have any interest in it. And dealing with the, you know, like running the front counter and dealing with all these people who are selling games. It's just not really where my specialty is. It's not where my comfort zone is.
    7:57
    So I think I'm pretty excited about it. It's the next step. When we say we're trying to make ourselves kind of the hub, a hub for pinball and really just expand the hobby as much as we can And really just bring a positive light to it and get people hooked on it. So, yeah, I think it's the next step in that direction. I really wish there would be a location that we could purchase games closer to where I live, because for me, not that I plan on going to a different dealer. I enjoy buying all my games from Old Town. But anyway, Old Town's two and a half hours from Savannah. And then I've got Jason with Classic Game Rooms all the way up in Atlanta. And then I've got Marco.
    8:43
    But there's like nobody like in the center of all that. I'm like, I feel like there's room like everywhere is two and a half hours to four hours away. Right. Yeah. Well, that's what that's the kind of the gap we're hoping to fill because there's not real. Like you said, there's an old town there in Florida, right? Yeah. St. Augustine. Yeah, and then you got Jason in Covington and you got Marcos in Columbia, but in between, those are hours and hours and hours in between. So if we can fill that gap, and not to mention one thing, it's not just we can offer Marcos benefit too because we propose that we act as their showroom because we have very high standards for our games. If you find a game in our place that has a problem, it's because nobody's told me about it because I will either fix it or get it out. So we have what we have committed to and wasn't even asked to commit to, but it's really something I think would help us be the most successful is to have every Stern that is in production on the floor. And we'd love to have that for the other games they sell, which is JJP and Chicago Gaming, and we're pretty close to it. I don't have Cactus Canyon, and there may be a JJP. I don't have Avatar in JJP, but other than that, I mean, so being able to act as a showroom and letting people, you can play. Like most people, if you don't have access to a dealer, you watch these videos online, you watch the release stuff from Stern or JJP or whoever, And you have to call up somebody and order it, I guess, or wait for a show to come around and go play it or find a location, wait on them to get it and go play it. But our place, you can come in and play it, then decide if you like it and buy it. And we've got people that lined up already, a couple lined up to buy Sonic, but they both want to get their hands on it first. So when we get Sonic in, they'll come over and play it. And I haven't heard a single negative thing about the game. Everybody I've heard is completely stoked on it. So my guess is when they'll buy it, they'll be ordering it and that'll be good. Yeah, my dealer, this was before he moved into his new location, but he had briefly thought about opening up an arcade, a pinball arcade, and then having his business like connected, but next door. That way, like all day long, he could run the arcade. And then if somebody wants to buy something, hey, coming over next door, you know, we'll ring you up and load you out with a new game. But kind of like somewhat what y'all guys are doing because, you know, you're going to have the arcade and then people can, you know, turn around and buy the game. That's it. And then we can, like I said, deliver it right then. Now we went to over the last week, we spent a week kind of touring the pinball places in Tennessee and we went to Game Terminal in Nashville and they have a separate sales room. Now I didn't see anybody in there. Maybe it's kind of an appointment only thing. And I don't know that they deal in new games or not. They just had a room over there with a sign in front of it that said that was kind of their sales department. But I thought that was a pretty neat idea. So, yeah, that's kind of what we're going for. I went to Old Town Pinball once. We were in Florida, like St. Augustine or something. I think it's about where they're at, if I'm correct. And we went there. Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure it was closed. Maybe it was a lunch or something. There was nobody there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's appointment only. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I guess that's all. Because, I mean, nobody's – I mean, you would just sit there all day and, you know, hardly have anything. I understand. Yeah. I've never really been to anywhere. I've never been to a showroom that – I think the only one I've been to that was, like, open all day – well, I guess classic game rooms in Atlanta. He seemed like he was open every day. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And then Marshall. I've been there, and he's always there and loaded with games. Yeah. And then Marshall with a little shop of games. But I don't know Marshall's deal now because I don't know if he still has the storefront anymore. So you've been to Jason's place, Jason Grindle's place in Covington? Yeah. So have you ever seen a bigger selection of pinball machines? No, I tell people that have never been there. I'm like, you remember Indiana Jones at like the end where they're putting away the Ark of the Covenant and like that warehouse? That's what this place is like, but it's pinball. And like it is men on it. Yeah, and you can't even, like, get to half the shit. Like, you know, some of it's like it's buried that way. The last time I went there, he had cleared out a room where it wasn't. The first time I went there, I was like, I feel like it would take you a week to even get to a game. Oh, the back right corner when I went. This was the last time I've been there. It's when Godfather came out. So, I mean, it's been a minute. But that whole back right corner, like, you couldn't get to anything. Like I was asking him about like some rare games. He's like, yeah, I got a Ghostbusters, Ellie. It's it's back there. And a Stranger Things, Ellie. That was like, you know, at the time I wanted both of those games.
    13:53
    Yeah, I do. My jaw hit the floor when I walked in there. That place is I like I've never seen so much pinball inventory. I was like, this is wow. Yeah. To this day, I've never. Wow. I hear a lot of people like, oh, this is the biggest dealer and this is the biggest dealer. And I don't know if Jason's the biggest dealer. And I'm like, yeah, y'all haven't seen Classic Game Rooms because that place is fucking crazy. If there's somebody who's got more inventory than he does, wow. Dude, he had them stacked three tall when I was there. Like, you know all the games that say, like, don't stack? He's stacking them three tall. I'm like, damn. I'm sure he put some plywood down or something. No, it was just right on top of the box. I'm like, oh, my God. And these were Stern boxes. Is there anything really holding the box up? I don't think so. The boxes are pretty tough, though. Yeah. Let's hope. Three tall. How many games can you keep in your place? How many games you got in the pinball studio? Right now there's only 21 in there, but I could do like 26 if I wanted to, but it starts eating up like the floor print of the, you know, I like it to be where people can still walk around really nicely, especially with the tournament. I don't like it, you know, getting overly crowded because I could put games down the center of the whole room, but I'm trying to avoid doing that. Now, another thing is I could fit another game on like my stern wall, but then the games start getting so close to each other. People are like hitting each other's hands, you know, while they're playing. Yeah, but we played a game. I don't remember where I was somewhere in Tennessee over last week, and I was playing a game. And there was a guy playing a game and he's a wide flipper. So like his fingers kept touching mine and it was awkward. The first time, you know, the second time, the third time, the fifth time, I was like, you know what, I think I've had enough of this. I don't know if this dude's trying to grope me up or if he's just a wide flipper. I don't know. Yeah, I've never really. I don't need that much run at it. I've never had that problem but a couple times. And one time was at the Pinball Palace, and those games are pretty close together. Nothing against them. Love that place. Well, I mean, ours are the same way. We had a choice between more space and more games. Right. And we figure more games is more people, and more selection is more desire to go to the place. So, look, I get why people don't like games close together, but I also get why Kelly's got them crammed in there because I do the exact same thing. My biggest problem was I've got to still leave a big enough gap where people won't slam the games into each other because tournaments, everyone's moving a game. So when I try to squeeze that one last game in, I mean, there's literally like maybe one inch in between the games, probably like three quarters of an inch. So, you know, one good nudge, you're slamming it into the other game.
    16:55
    Yeah. Well, how did you decide? You don't really want games in the middle of your place anyway because the back of the games look like ass. I mean, you don't look at the back of the game. And then cords and stuff, and then people start nudging them back, and at least when they're against the wall, they stop with the wall.
    17:12
    Yeah, because I get – yeah, and when we originally set up our place, I ended up with classic video games in the middle. I could have room for one row of pinball, but again, one aisle, if you went on that, you'd be looking at the back of the game, It's just not a good look. I'd rather have video games back-to-back there, and it looks good and inviting everywhere. I almost put a few video games in the center of my room because I was like, well, pinball takes up a little bit too much room, but I could put a couple of these just for people to play on in their free time or whatever in between rounds of tournaments. Pinball people really don't do that. I don't know. They play my little Pac-Man machine a lot. I do notice that. So I'm like, all right, maybe they do. I bet if I had like a Buck Hunter or something, they'd be into it. But those damn things, man, I want the Buck Hunter, the new one so bad. But having to pay all the subscription fees and having it on free play just really, you know, it's really set up for like, you know, feeding dollars in it versus doing a free play type thing with it. I heard somewhere and I honestly I thought it was you that there is a version of that. No, it couldn't have been you. I don't think. Yeah, it was. You can buy one with everything preloaded, but it is thousands of more dollars. Like it's not 1,500 more. It's like 5,000 more. Well, I refuse to do subscriptions on it. I mean, I just don't do that. I don't know. There was a point in my life once many years ago that I was way into motorcycles. I get a new motorcycle every six months. At one point, I had two cars, two trucks, two motorcycles, and two four wheels. So anyway, it was around that time that I realized that every dollar I made went to payments. I was like, if I ever get out of this hole, I'm never getting back in it. And I got out of that hole, and I'm not getting back in it. I call all these payments, man. It's a death by a thousand cuts. Oh, yeah.
    19:06
    Subscriptions, too. Not debt, necessarily. But, man, all of a sudden you've got like 10, 15, 20 subscriptions. Thank God I only have like three or four in there. They're needed, like, you know, my TV subscription and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, no, it's not debt, but you're payment poor. That's what I'm saying. So it's about the same thing. Yeah. So how do you decide your game room layout? I mean, what factors do you really have to consider when you do your game room layout? You obviously said, you know, how people, where people have room during tournaments. Is there anything else you really have to work around? I mean, pretty much just like what I said earlier, like I want the games. My games are close together, but I've got like in between the heads, I've probably got three inches, you know, on each side of the game that way. That's nice. That's a nice number. People, like I said, you know, casuals aren't slamming machines around nearly as much as tournament players are because these people don't want to lose.
    20:05
    So that's one thing. And then just like not having the games in the center because I have had the games in the center of the room and it kind of created a traffic jam, Especially when I was starting new rounds and stuff and everybody trying to like go down rows to get to games versus just, you know, being able to split off left and right. And I noticed like my building was getting warmer when I had all the games in the middle, which was weird. But like when I have it only against the walls, like the building was staying cooler, which is which is odd. I usually don't have a problem with cooling the building. It's just those couple months like July and August, if people don't close the door, like they'll open the door and be talking to somebody outside and just have the door open for like 30 seconds. And I'm like, close the fucking door.
    20:55
    Yeah, we we have a similar problem in our place. It between all the games all the games like we run all the games and the temperature doesn go up in the room But when you load in 100 people our AC unit can maintain an average crowd people pretty evenly dispersed But when it gets crowded in there, it can't keep up. So we'll have it set in the 60s, and by the end of the day, it's almost 80 in there. So we've really been battling that. This will be our third year. Yeah, I'm thinking about battling that. I'm halfway tempted to add a second unit on my building that's not necessary 90% of the time, but those days when I'm having trouble, like, kick it on for backup.
    21:48
    Oh, that'd be great. But I don't own the building. Also, we're in a historic area, so there's a lot of regulations there. And even to get another unit up there, because we've looked into it, we have to rent the crane, shut the streets down, and it has to be... So you almost need like a temporary setup. Yeah, but I have nowhere to vent. Yeah, it's a pitch.
    22:09
    Yeah, so anyway, yeah, long story short, we're battling that and we're getting it better. It's the door, too, that I've noticed. Like, the people definitely heat it up, but like, even in your arcade, there's probably not 30 seconds that goes by that someone doesn't open the damn door and go in or out. That's right. But we've solved, that's one of the solutions we did. So on our building, you walk in the main door, and then there are a few doors down the hallway, and then we're a few of those doors. So what we've done now is we refrigerate the hallway pretty much, and that way it minimizes the amount that the door affects it. I actually thought about doing that on my building. It was like building, I don't know what the hell you call it, like when you went in a mall years ago. You go through the first door, there's a little section of area that's closed in, and then you actually go in the building. Sure. Yeah, maybe that helps. Maybe it does. How many games do you say? So every time I talk to you, it seems like you've just added and just moved out a game. How many games do you get a year? New, used? I've really slowed down this year. I mean, this year I'll probably have, I don't know, I think I've purchased three. Or four games this year. I'll probably buy five or six. But I mean, a while ago, I was just buying every Stern. Every Stern that came out, I just got it regardless. And then if I needed to move a game to either help pay for it or needed to make room, I would sell a game. So that's how I was doing it for the longest time. But I've never really stayed on top of like buying any Jersey Jacks or any of the other brands. It was mainly just Sterns back then. And then just randomly picking up a classic, and those are usually just, you know, the deal just makes sense. So do you always, like, trade out? You have to trade out, right? Because you're on, like, a storage unit full of some somewhere. No. When one comes in, one goes. Usually. Now, there's a few games in my building that are actually, how many is there? I think there's three games in my building that aren't mine currently. So I could kick one of those out.
    24:25
    Okay. So what do you do with the old ones? I mean, you sell them, you're a Facebook guy, you pin side, or do you just tell people about it? Usually it goes on pin side unless my dealer wants it. But if it's just another Stern, he typically doesn't want it. Or if he does, he's not going to give me what I want for it. So usually I throw it on pin side. I've done Facebook, and that's fine, too. I've sold a few games that way. I like dealing with pinball people a lot more, and I tend to only find pinball people on Pinside where, like, Facebook, it's someone trying to, you know, trade me their Jeep Cherokee and their Weber Grill for it or some shit.
    25:02
    So, yeah, it's usually Pinside. So where do you – okay, that's where you sell. Where do you go to find the best deals? Oh, shit. I probably get my best deals through trades, but usually Pinsider, my dealer, my dealer's not big on older games too, so he'll get old System 11 or something like that in and before he even lists it, he'll be like, do you want this? This doesn't work on it, but sold as is if you want it.
    25:34
    I've never really done much trading. I'm about to trade, but maybe my first game. Is that right? I'm going to trade a Tales from the Crypt for a Stern Star Trek.
    25:46
    Oh, damn. They don't have all the Star Tracks. I love Stern Star Trek. Yeah, I'm excited about that. That's cool, man. Pro? But, yeah. Okay. I always feel like every time I've listed a game for trade, because we have listed them before, some of the games we're getting rid of, everybody offers us crap. I mean, they're like, I've got these four broken EMs. Oh, I agree. I usually in my backyard. I'm usually the one that finds the trade. So say there's a game I'm getting ready to shit how I just got Rush, which, you know, he got a great deal, too. And it actually worked out for both of us because both the games were, I feel, worth similar values.
    26:31
    He was selling Rush and it said, I don't think fifty five hundred or best offer or something like that. I reached out to him and I was like, any interest in Shadow? And he's like, yeah. And he's like, what you thinking? Even trading? I'm like, yep. And we set up a day to meet and we met and did the trade. So a lot of times I find – Yeah, go ahead. I say I'm sure he made out like a bandit because I know how you keep your games and I know the condition of your games. Oh, it was a nice Shadow. I did a lot of work to it. But yeah, his game was really clean too. So it really worked out in the long run. But a lot of these trades I find, say it's a game I'm about to sell, and a lot of times I'll go on Pinside and I'll look at the games that have been posted for, I forget how long they'll leave them on there, 60 days or 90 days or whatever. I'll look at the end of the list and I'll be like, all right, this guy's been trying to sell this thing for a hot minute. Let's reach out to him and see if he'll do a trade. You know, he may be getting fed up with trying to sell this. And a lot of the trade deals I've ended up with that way.
    27:39
    Wow. That's smart, man. That's a smart way to do it. But that's kind of in the position we're in because a lot of times people reach out to us and be like, I've got this game and they'll, how much you want for it? And the high value on Pinside is, no, man, we don't, like, I don't need anything. So, yeah, I'm not the source. I'm not the place for that. If you're trying to get a quick turnaround and you need high-end value, we have more games than we can possibly use. I mean, we have too many games, so I'm not the place to go to get, you know, the top dollar for it. But if it's a good deal, obviously, you know, I keep making, we keep making these decisions and picking up more and more and more. So how do you know how much to pay for a game? Is it pretty much Pinside or is there some other metric that you use? I think a lot of it's just I've just been dabbling in it long enough to freaking know what to buy and what not to buy. For the most part, I mean, you know, there's those few Bonsai type, Bonsai run type games that are going to be worth more than the average. But yeah, I mean, pretty much I just go off of, you know, certain people try with certain classics and stuff and try to act like they're worth, you know, three more grand than this other title. And I'm kind of like, if it's a ballet game, I want to play around a thousand bucks for it. If it's a solid state, like alphanumeric, unless it's like one of those gems that you just cannot find. And, you know, even going into like the System 11 type games, I'm more of like 2,000 to 3,000 somewhere in there. And then, you know, WPC games, 3,000 to 5,000 somewhere in there. So that's the way I look at it, you know, minus the Addams Family and those occasional ones. Sure. So when you pick up a game like that, when you eventually get rid of it, how concerned are you with making all of your money back? Or do you just get rid of this? Or do you typically lose? Or do you typically win? Oh, I always lose. Where are you at? I mean, I get it.
    29:50
    That's the problem. So I buy all these games from people all the freaking time and they're like, oh, it's 100%. Oh, I've went through this. I did so much to it. I shopped it out. And I am yet to have bought a game from anybody where it like actually met my standard. And I'm like, what do you mean by shopping out? Like wiping the playfield off and like putting a new plastic set on? Because like shopping out to me is like breaking down the entire top of the playfield, cleaning everything, replacing some components, replace the plastics, the rubbers, you know, LED it out, any burnt connectors, get all those replaced. But yeah, I usually always spend entirely too much money fixing up a game. I don't always, sometimes I don't go too crazy with it. I'm trying not to do as much as I once was. And then if you do a restoration, you can just freaking forget it. Buy games restored, don't restore games.
    30:48
    I can't get to, I've got three play fields I need to change. I have all three play fields and I can't get to them. Oh, I've got a roller games right behind me. I gotta do, I'm not looking forward to that. Yeah, I mean, I wanna do these games. I got a new playfield for Phantom of the Opera, for Flash Gordon. No sir.
    31:06
    Yeah, I don't have time to get to it. I just don't have time to do it. If it's a classic, I don't mind. It's not hard. As long as it doesn't have a bunch of star rollovers. Because the clear coat in those and trying to clean it out where those work right is a freaking nightmare. But, like, if it's like a Strikes and Spares, even though that has a shit ton of those. Um, I can do one of those in like eight hours.
    31:31
    Okay, nice. Yeah, but I don't mean, yeah. But roller games is going to take me three fucking days. You know what I mean? Really? Yeah. I mean, have you ever looked at that game? Well, it's just got so much crap on it. It's just stacked and stacked with crap. Um, so it's just going to be fun taking all that apart and trying to remember where it all goes because I have a crazy ass layout. I think I told you one time I'm just like laying fucking parts all over the house everywhere. You did. You did. I don't bag shit. It's just like, oh, that's in the kitchen over by the toaster.
    32:08
    Bro, you go hard, man. I gotta give you credit. But I try to get it all done quickly. I'm like, all right, don't freak out because all this shit is going right back in this game. Like we are not leaving this shit out long. So that's my big problem is when I start something like that, inevitably I have, you know, in effect, two full-time jobs. So inevitably I'm going to be like, this is the time I'm going to do that, and I will get it apart and I will get interrupted and I won't get back to it for months. I was like, Star Trek, the next generation, you know, redid that one. And man, I had to set it aside for like six months. And when I opened it back, I was like, what in the hell was I doing? I don't even remember where I was at. Yeah, see, that's why I like to do it as quickly as possible because the longer I wait, the more I forget of what I've done and like, you know, where I left off and everything and where are these parts. It's like my homebrew, dude. I've got that shit torn apart and I took it apart so long ago.
    33:05
    That's going to be fun whenever I put that back together. How long have you been working on that? Since January and I've got nowhere.
    33:15
    Oh, well, that's not bad. I remember when I came to your place, I got the impression that you had been working on it a while. No, I bought the one kind of redoing a James Bond, but I got the James Bond. It was like January 18th or something like that, and that's I guess when you can officially say I started. So one day I will get a play field cut, but who knows when that will be. Do you ever mess with auctions at all? Do you ever get games from there? Online or in person like auction game sales? I've always wanted to go to the ones that they have in the Carolinas, but no. I mean, there's no auctions near me. They're all up near you. And I've never bought anything on eBay or anything like that. I've done the giveaway or the raffles or whatever, but never an auction.
    34:10
    We've done both. The in-person auction, like auction game sales is great because A, you get to try it before you buy it. But some of the online stuff, we've gotten burned on that a couple of times. And I don't mean like it's a scam or anything. You can't see it. Well, you can't see it. So, yeah, we've gotten burned on that. But it was something like, oh, man, it looked way better in the pictures. But also the other costs. You're like, oh, it's $1,000, man. That's a great deal. And then some of them charge 20% kind of commission, like a buyer's fee, and then it's another $1,000 to ship it to you. Well, you've got to pay someone to box it or create it for you, too, on top of the shipping cost. So, yeah, I can see how that just turns into a nightmare. Yeah, so your $2,000 game, you're like, heck yeah, that game normally goes for $2,500, and I got it for $2,000. And they say, well, there's your $2,000 game. Here's your 20% buyer's fee and it costs $1,000 to get it to you. So your $2,000 game just costs you $3,900. Dude, I love, do you ship a lot of games? I've shipped a few over the years. I've only ever shipped one. Oh, I've had a couple shipped to me. Like I said, I bought on auctions and we bought a Stern Indiana Jones from California, but it's beautiful. And so we had them shipped to us. I've only ever shipped one. Aaron just recently sold for Marco Rolling Stones and we shipped to Massachusetts. But it was the day after I got Transformers. So I took Transformers out of the box. Oh, perfect. Rolling Stones in it. So it's nice if you have a box. I've always used Blue Lane Freight. So it's through Fastenal. Are you familiar with them that sells like the, you know, the hardware bolts and nuts and stuff? So they've got like where you can basically, it's called Blue Lane Freight and you buy like a spot on their truck. So your pinball machine may go to three or four of their shops in between and get dropped off and picked up by another truck. A lot of times it's just a box truck, not even a semi.
    36:15
    I like them. Do they ever damage any of your games? No, I prefer them because of the reason they're not one of the big players. Anyways, when you use FedEx and stuff, your game is going to all kinds of busy-ass big hubs with forklifts everywhere and a lot of high-volume things moving very quickly, trucks getting packed very quickly. When you use Fastenal, it's more of like, you know, just the manager that's been there 10 years, like, oh, let me roll this around so you can put it on the box truck. Like, your games just don't get slammed around at all. So I always prefer using them. And, like, I just shipped my Beetlejuice from Georgia to Texas for $250.
    37:03
    Oh, shit. That's a really good price. Everything I've shipped or had shipped is $750. Oh, yeah. Was yours Butter Cabin? No, it wasn't Butter. You didn't do Butter Cabin, right? It wasn't Butter. Now. Butter Cabin is beautiful, but I'm just so scared. If something happened to it, you're screwed. Yeah, so with all that money saved, there's always what I do is I put it on a pallet, wrap it up. If I got a box, I throw the box on. But I go buy like five or six one-by-fours, and I build like a crate frame around it real quick. Nothing fancy, just like a box frame around it. That way, if it does get bumped by a forklift or something, you know, it doesn't tear through it. And being that I've saved, you know, $400, $500 on shipping, I'm like, I can spend a little bit of extra to, you know, make sure the game gets there safe. You're making me want to buy a game from you. Dude, the guy got the game in and he's like, bro, thank you so much for packaging this game so well.
    38:04
    Yeah, well, I feel like I worked like three hours getting that Rolling Stones in the Transformers box and getting it where I feel like it was waterproof. And that guy didn't say shit. I built a wooden frame and it took me like 30 minutes. Hey, shut up. But I'll have the chop saw there and I'll have my nail gun. So I'm just like, you know, I just build it real quick. That's awesome, man. I'd like to see that. You'll send me some pictures of that sometime. But no, it was the first one. It wasn't. The big thing is it wasn't my game. So that game belonged to Marcos. And so I was just very over. Like I would put it all in there. And start putting the stuff around the pad. And that's, God, that's not gonna be good enough. Take it out. You know what I mean? I just kept doing it over and over and over. And I kept making it bigger and stronger and wrapping it in different stuff and labeling different sides. I, it just, the first one, it was just the first one. They're not always going to take me that. But, um, we'll go ahead. I will say the first time I ever shipped a game, funny story, it was my RoboCop, which I totally regret selling, by the way.
    39:13
    The game got there, and somehow one of the legs found its way out of the whole packaging, and he's like, where's the third leg?
    39:24
    And I'm like, what do you mean? Wow, well, if he's missing the third, he's definitely missing the third. I'm like, well, I don't have it, and I know it was on there. I like had strapped them on the game, and I guess they, I don't know, wiggled out and, yeah.
    39:41
    That was FedEx, so I blame FedEx. You haven't stumbled across that? You haven't stumbled across it and, oh, shit, here it is.
    39:48
    No, it's kind of large. Where's this extra leg coming from? I thought he was like bullshitting me, and I was like, how does that fucking fall out? But I did just kind of strap it to the side of the game, so I don't know. You know what? That is a game that they could redo and I would buy. I'm not saying, when I say redo a game, I don't mean like if you make it exactly the way that it was Data East, right? Make it exactly the way Data East did it that I bought. I'm saying, yes, yes, revisit that theme because, oh, it would sell wonderful. Robocop was a dead or not. I don't know why people haven't made a new Robocop. I think you can make a new Robocop, a new T2, a bunch of those films that everyone's just crazy about. Sure. Fifth Element. Sure. Even though that hasn't been made.
    40:32
    Well, you know, you just offered a good transition into picking up where we left off with the rumors game. You up for some more of that? I guess.
    40:43
    I don't think I'm very good at this game. You might think you know more about pinball than Sterling does, but you'd be wrong. Nobody knows more about pinball than Sterling. Sterling knows. When Google has a question about pinball, they ask Sterling. Sterling knows.
    41:02
    If you look in the dictionary under real man, you will find only a picture of Sterling Martin riding a polar bear, nude, with a bald eagle on his right shoulder and wearing a live honey badger for a hat. His strong, rippling muscles glistening through the morning dew. Sterling knows.
    41:21
    That was creepy as shit. If you think that was something, wait till you see the cover photo I'm sending you to go along with this episode. Oh my word. Alright, so the goal of this game is I'm going to give you, just from anybody in mind who listened to the last one, I'm going to give you a clip of a rumored title. And you're going to let me know what is that title and what do you know about it because you always seem to have the inside track. So you ready for the first one? Yeah. There is a fifth dimension.
    41:59
    Sorry, I had the volume still turned down and I didn't realize. Did you hear that? I heard there is a fifth dimension.
    42:05
    Twilight Zone? Okay, all right. Well, what do you know about it? Nothing, really. I heard at one point Chicago Gaming was supposedly going to be working on it, but I mean those rumors really started like three years ago I think So we see Stay tuned That what I heard about it as well was Chicago Gaming And I think the next I think we're just going to see Attack from Mars. And then I think we're going to see Halo. And I think that's probably all that's planned at the moment with them. Well, and their build speed, that'll cover the next decade. Exactly. All right. Well, we'll go on to the next one. Yeah, I'm going to need some more.
    42:53
    I don't know. What in the hell? Oh, G.I. Joe. I didn't watch that shit either, so I'm like, I don't know what the fuck this is. I got a podcast with somebody older.
    43:15
    Yeah, you're missing me by like five to ten years. Yeah, you know what? When was G.I. Joe really popular?
    43:23
    80s, 80s. I think it was like 80, early to mid-80s. Okay. But still, man, please don't know it. Yeah, you were watching. Yeah, you were like a barn. I was more into like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I freaking loved that shit, animated. Yeah, me too. All right, so what do you know about it?
    43:45
    G.I. Joe, anything? Nothing? Yeah. So as of recently, I've heard that actually Stern is going to be making G.I. Joe, so we'll just have to wait and see. I really don't know much about that title being made other than recently I heard Barrels of Fun is not making it and Stern will be making it. All right, next one.
    44:11
    What? I was made for loving you, baby. I mean, I know the song. I don't know what movie it's from. That's Kiss. That's not a movie. It's Kiss. Okay. Oh, so you threw me with a curveball there with a music pin.
    44:29
    Kiss. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Kiss myself. I keep hearing it's ACDC, so I'm going to go ahead and say Kiss is not going to be made this year. The only problem I have with ACDC is it's a Steve Ritchie game and I find it hard that there would be a designer out there that would want to work on that project. Unless it's George Gomez. I just can't see any designer like, yeah, I'll fix Steve's game since it wasn't perfect. I don't know, man. I mean, why not? I mean, Stern owns. Oh, I get that. The designer doesn't own it. Oh, I know, but I just – After being in service for all these years, man, if a game has an issue, everybody knows about it. Everybody's complaining about it, and I'm not saying KISS does. I don't own the game well enough, but I'm saying any game that's been out in service, everybody knows. The short – definitely Stern does. I mean, they've got their tech line that people have to call and complain about stuff. So everybody knows, if you give me a game and say, hey, this is happening, if I were a designer, should be able to fix that. But I just don't see any designer wanting to take up the job because they've always said, you know, very often I've heard George Gomez state that, you know, we're not going to force them to work on anything. You know, if there's a theme they don't like, we're not going to make them do the theme. And I think there's just all those guys are still really good friends of Steve Ritchie. And I just don't, you know, I see George Gomez going around asking, hey, Keith, you want to work on it? And he's probably like, no, I'm good. I feel like that's going to be the response from everybody.
    46:06
    Unless it's George, like I said, unless George just because he usually, you know, when nobody else will pick up the slack, it's usually him. Then why not? All right.
    46:19
    Oh, Back to the Future. If you don't get this one. Okay. It's the only movie I've seen. All right. I say it's a softball because A, I knew you'd know it, and B, I think it's probably more than a rumor at this point. So what do you got? I mean, I don't think anybody's heard any new news on Back to the Future. Supposedly it's coming, you know, around December time, at least the reveal of the title. I don't know if they're going to show anything in the game. I've heard the artwork is okay. I mean, I know Franchi did it. I just don't know if Franchi went all out like he normally does on his games or if it's more like kind of like what he did on Houdini, you know, same artwork on both sides and kind of stuff. But I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. I'm really worried about it. Honestly, I wish it was more of a Stern or JJP game or something like that. So the title is going to be a juggernaut, but do you think anybody will actually buy it? And even more, do you think anybody's going to be an early adopter? Because they had the reputation with The Big Lebowski of putting out, you know, the early adopters basically getting left in the dust while people ordered much later got their games kind of right away. I think it's going to be a lot more. I think it's going to be more similar to like how Alice was released, but it's going to be a lot more popular.
    47:49
    I think everyone would get their games and stuff. I think it will take for fucking ever, like always. I mean, they're way behind even on the Alice in Wonderland, but I think it will be better than it was from the Lebowski. I don't think people are necessarily going to wait 10 years, but yeah, get ready to wait like Chicago gaming wait times, I guess. But I think people would be thrilled with that with Dutch because, I mean, look at Lebowski. All right, let's say your working time, the time that you work in your life, let's say it's 40 years. At the Bowski pace, that means they can get four games in a working lifetime. So, you know, I just don't know. I think if I ordered a Back to the Future and I got it in two years, I'd be like, wow, that's awesome. I think they're running their own kind of business, if you ask me. I would be wanting if I didn't live if my manufacturing wasn't in the United States where 90 percent of these people are buying these things.
    48:52
    I think I would be wanting to design games and develop games and then get another company to build them in the States. And then I don't have to worry about manufacturing them. Yeah, there was a time when American Pinball, I think, wanted to do that. They were or they they were open to it. I don't know. Maybe maybe I made that up. I don't know. But yeah, supposedly they were talking about doing contract manufacturing. I mean, Stern's done it in the past. They did it for Chicago Gaming with, I think it was Medieval Madness. I forget what title it was. It was quite a few years ago, but I think a lot of companies, you know, Stern's always, you know, I think half the reason why Stern pushes so many of these games out is just because they got to keep the line going and keep all their workers going. If the right deal came out there, I don't think they would necessarily be against building a ton of pinball machines for a bunch of money.
    49:45
    I think I just saw they vaulted Venom. Did you see that? No, but I believe it. All right, so next one.
    49:56
    God damn it! That's probably not enough. Let me give you a little more. No, no, I do know that one. God damn it, Donut!
    50:03
    I do know that one. By the time you release this episode, that may already be, they're teasing it. So what do you got?
    50:10
    I think everyone knows that Multimorphic is making that, and people have been visiting there over the past week and playing the game. I don't think anybody knows anything other than that. Yeah. And supposedly there's going to be like this second release or something, like another game title or something. I'm guessing it's sharing the same layout. I could be wrong. I didn't really look much into this. I don't really follow their stuff too closely, but yeah, that's my understanding. Do you think that Multimorphic ever breaks into the mainstream pinball market? No. Right now it seems to be a really new thing. I think everyone has already asked Jerry that a million times, and his answer is pretty much no. I think he just wants to bring something different to the market, which is, I mean, it's really cool. It's just I'm not a buyer for it, honestly. I just I don't care how the flippers feel. And I know that's that's the answer most people say about those games. But I just can't quite get over it. It feels a little odd to me.
    51:16
    I've only seen two in my life. I played the Princess Bride at the pinball lounge in Olvita, Florida. Yeah. And it is very unique that the flippers were odd. It was almost like they were operated through some kind of. Well, they're floating. Top side linkage. Yeah, it is. Because you can't put holes through the TV screen, so they've got to figure out a way to float it over the top. And, yeah, that just ends up adding a bunch of linkage.
    51:43
    It was neat. It felt kind of bare. And the only other one I saw, I think, was at Pinball at the Beach. I think there was one, but it was something. Yeah. Yeah, they bring the whole lineup every year to Texas Pinball Festival, so I always see them and play them there. I mean, who knows? Maybe they'll come out with, you know, if they were making Back to the Future, I'd probably be buying it. So, you know, never say never. But at the moment, I've got, you know, only a spot for a few more games. So I got to definitely make sure it checks all the boxes with theme. Is it fun and is it reliable? So, you know, you might be the target market for Dungeon Crawler Carl and Multimorphic. You've only got so much room. You can get all these modules. Yeah, no, no, I don't have a place to store a bunch of modules either. I'd like to play Portal. Everybody's raving about that game. I'd like to check that out. Yeah, I didn't play Portal. I saw Portal. I should have probably played it. It's supposed to be good. Everybody's saying it's good. I don't know. Everyone's saying this one that's about to come out, though, is supposed to be the one if it's Dungeon Crawler Carl. I haven't listened to any of the books. I tried, so I listened to like a demo, and I don't know, it was like five or ten minutes long, and I just couldn't quite get into it. So I was like, I don't know if I need to go down this rabbit hole of audio books.
    53:03
    I'm glad I didn't. A lot of, you know, when a new title is coming out, for example, say Fallout. I know nothing about Fallout. But when Fallout, the rumor was Fallout, I tried to watch the show. Couldn't get into it. I resisted the urge to download an audiobook of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and it turns out that Portal, again, nothing against Multimorphic, but I'll probably never see or get to play a Dungeon Crawler Carl ever in my life. If you go to Texas Pinball Festival, you will. They always got them all there. I want to. I want to. All right. Have you gotten your hands on a Transformers yet? I have not. I haven't gotten to play shit because Kelly's not buying any of the games right now. But I know he's going to get them eventually, so then I'll try them all out. But I'm not going to any pinball shows for the rest of the year, so I guess I'm going to have to travel around to play some of these games. I know I'll go to my dealer before too long because I will probably buy Fallout more than likely because I usually give in for the Elwyn game every year. Don't blame you there. You can bring your ass up, though. I forgot the name of the whole business I run. Radioactive, man.
    54:22
    Yeah, I do need to come. I've been to your place. I do. How far of a drive are you again? That's about three and a half hours for you, though, so I get it. That's what it took me to get to you. Yeah. If I'm ever up that way, absolutely. But I just need to make a trip out there one of these days and check you guys out. You go to like Greenville or something, you say? You go to Greenville? Yeah, I go to Greer a lot that's near Greenville or kind of.
    54:53
    Well, so what are you hearing about Transformers on there? Mixed reviews. I've heard people love it, people hate it. I've heard it just takes some tweaking to get it to shoot really good. My buddy Retro Ralph's having a problem with like the cannon shooting into the wire form or something, but they're trying to work that out. And then I've heard something about the Orbit having to like adjust that to get it to play right. But, you know, and then I hear other people like Zero Issues plays great. It's awesome. So, yeah. Well, I can tell you that we've had ours for one month tomorrow. And consider that we're only open 35 hours a week too now. And ours has been played.
    55:39
    Interesting little thing we did for the first time ever because we're having so many games come in. And now we're full. We have 69 games between the floor, what's in the main arcade and what's in the party room. It's 69 games. So every time something comes in, something's got to come out. So one way we decided to do that is to actually we decided for the first time ever to audit the games. That way we can actually see so far it's been anecdotal when something comes in. I don't I don't think anybody plays this game. We take it out. But going forward, since we audited the games, we're actually going to see what are people actually playing and how much are they playing? So I actually thought that might be interesting for you. One of the things I enjoyed when I listened to once before, Electric Bat has a show, and once I heard that one, they did a monthly report. Oh yeah, every episode, Rachel does the monthly report on what games were the most popular that month. Yeah, so I can give you that if you're kind of interested. Like our game will be one month old tomorrow and it has been played, let me see, 1,115 times. So when you compare that with, yeah, I mean, so just give you an idea. And if you're interested, I can give you, I can let you, I probably don't want you to guess, Adam, But I can give you the top five games all time in the arcade, and I know at least one of them is going to shock you. Let's see, but right now you compare that to... You're going to guess them? Hey, you actually might be able to get some. So Pokemon, Pokemon we've had now for four months, and if you add both of them together, so, well, the LE has had, the LE came out a month after the Pro. So I'll say the Pro is 4,042 plays, and the LE came out a month later, and it's 4,850 plays. So Pokemon, if you add the two together, which I guess you don't because they're both on the floor at the same time, but we're over 8,000 in four months. So that's rolling, buddy. That's two grand a month. That's a lot of... I wish you could compare it to only one. I'd like to know if the numbers would be that high if you only had one on the floor. Yeah, well, ours, we would normally only have one, but we've decided to build for a section of games for kids and for anybody who just likes to, you know, play a game that's a little lower. We build a section of lowered games, so that's the reason we have two, because I thought it'd be a really good title for kids in particular, but adults will play it every bit as much as kids. But we have a section of games that has 28.5-inch legs on it that I just had custom made. I just ordered regular legs and took them to a machine shop and said make these 28.5-inch overall length.
    58:49
    So, yeah, it seems to be really popular, so we've expanded that, and we're trying to make a whole row out of those now. We've got four lowered right now. Right now it's Shrek. It's a really popular game in the arcade and with kids particularly. And Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Premium, and then Avengers. But Avengers may be the next one to go when another Stern comes in. But anyway, you want to hear these top – oh, and another interesting one that we just got in would be The Walking Dead because we just got that in – Matter of fact, we got it in the same day as Transformers, so a month ago, and it's got 813 plays compared to Transformers, 1,115.
    59:35
    Nice. Okay, so I'll give you a hint of where to go in guessing the top five games. Actually, I've got the top six here listed of all time in the arcade. I'll go ahead and give you a hint and tell you they're all Sterns. They're all in Clatter Connected, which is no shock to me.
    59:55
    Yeah, those games we have so many and we have 30 of them because Insider Connected, like you said, you buy the Stearns. It's just that they've figured it out with that, whether it's Insider Connected or whether it's the way the games play or whether it's their theme integration, whatever it is, they've figured it out. That is the most popular with people. So give me what you think are the top five.
    60:20
    Top five, and they're all Spike 2 or Spike or whatever. Yeah, they would have to be Spike. Unfortunately, now after this month, I'll be able to give you month-to-month numbers and we can compare what people are actually playing. But the problem with this game is right now is it's lifetime. So you're looking three years, you know. So the Spike 3s, they just haven't been on the floor. I don't even know what games you have, but I'm going to assume you've got all the bangers. All of them except for – I've got all of this. We have all of the Insider Connected games except for Beatles and Bond 60th. Oh, cool. Which I'm sure we'll get at some point. Nice. But, yeah, other than that, we have everything. So what do you think? My guess – so there's six of them?
    61:02
    I've got the top six here listed. Okay. But, yeah, so I'm going to say – See if you can guess any of the top six. Godzilla, Stranger Things.
    61:12
    Stranger Things was number one. Ooh. I'm going to tell you that is, but it's really the number. You want me to finish or you want to tell me a little bit about it? However you want to do it. Go ahead. All right. You can just tell me which one. Godzilla, Stranger Things, yes. All right. This is the top six. You write both of those. Jurassic Park? No. Ooh, I fucked up.
    61:35
    Let's see. Jaws. No, but honestly, it's probably because it was only released in, that was released in what, 24, 25. Steve Ritchie, Star Wars. Yes.
    61:51
    I think I'm pretty good at this. Do I have one more guess? I think I got one more. Hmm. I want to say Deadpool or Elvira. Let's do. They're both in the top six. So you're only missing one. You've nailed. I mean, hey, man, you know what? We're going to redo that intro and it's going to be for you guessing the play count. I'm going to do one more. I've got to guess. You didn't know shit about this. So there's only one I didn't guess? You're not going to guess it. I'm not going to guess it? You know what? Yes. Guess it knowing that you're not going to guess it.
    62:31
    Guardians. No. All right. So you want to hear them? Sure. All right. Number one with – now, granted, these games were new when we got them. So there are a couple games like Stranger Things that may have been played a few times at the house. But there's also, like for Stranger Things, for example, I have two of those. So if the Pro ever messed up, we'd bring in the Premium and see the Premium has about 6,500 plays on it. The Pro, which has spent most of its life in there, we never kept them on the floor at the same time is what I'm saying. So it has 31,757 plays on it. So almost 37,000 or almost 38,000 between the two. All right. So that's going to be your number one. That's your that's your. So next is you're going to go to Star Wars at 26,830.
    63:27
    Number three Godzilla 23 Number four Deadpool 22 Number five is where I figured I get you because it shocked me Venom 21 Yes Venom gets the crap played out of it Out of 30 insider connected games As a matter of fact, out of 100 because it's again, these aren't just the most popular. Spike 2 or Spike 3 or. See, I was thinking Guardians. There's popular games in the arcade. I was thinking Guardians just because of a theme. I was like, well, that's a really strong theme. It's an older game. But, yeah, I would have never thought Venom. Venom's not that old. That's around Jaws. Right.
    64:14
    It's 23. And our Guardians is running custom code, which puts all the actual movie audio and the songs in it. So it's not, I mean, because that's one thing I feel like hurt Guardians. Maybe that's why they're not playing it.
    64:33
    I don't know, man, no way. I couldn't stand the original. I think that's one thing that hurt Guardians as a product, as the way it came out. It sounded like they had one guy do all the voices of all the characters in the movie. You know, he just, I don't know, you killed my wife, you killed my daughter. And you know what I mean? When you're watching the actual guy in the movie, but the voice doesn't match the movie that everybody interested in that would have seen. And songs are kind of these, I don't know, they're okay, but it puts all the legit stuff in there. But anyway, and even with that, it didn't make the, matter of fact, I can tell you what Guardians makes or what it has as a lifetime play. I always love the crappy call outs on Stranger Things. The guy that did Hopper, the sheriff.
    65:20
    Yeah. It's like, well. I kind of like it. I thought he sounded pretty close. It's not horrible, but it's funny, some of the lines. No, but if you play Guardians, come on now. It's not even close. It's not even in the ballpark. Well, I thought Halloween, people used to complain about the call. I'd say, that guy sounds just like him. I don't know. Maybe I'm easily amused. But Guardians at $19,627 and just two. So that's right behind number six. So that's going to be pretty close to number seven. OK, so you were you were close, but it didn't make it. It sounds like you needed to have all of these on coin drop and you would have made quite a lot of money. No doubt. But I'd have probably gone out of business. I don't know, because when we opened this place, there was no pinball presence. So there wasn't, you know, nobody had a love for pinball in this area, or very fewer people had it in this area to play a dime. I mean, I don't think they're going to pay me $38,000. I think CoinDrop, I think it works okay for people that are really into pinball, But people like if you're more casual, I feel like you might only put a dollar in of coins and like, all right, I'm not good at this. I'm not going to continue to put money in these machines because I'm just not good at it. Where with the free play, you know, they might come in and spend that 20 or 30 or whatever your rate is for the day and give it a chance. I don't know if they would have fed $20 in a machine or $30 in a machine.
    67:02
    So, yeah, to prove your point, as I mentioned, Aaron and I just spent the last week going through Tennessee and hitting all the arcades. We go into a place like Game Terminal, which I thought was fantastic. Aaron didn't play but a couple games. As a matter of fact, all the games she played except for maybe one was games that I won hitting replay. Because now I'm a good enough, I'm not a great player by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm good enough to where I can hit the replay score most of the time. So I'll hit the replay, but when I gave her, I walked in and like bought $20 worth of tokens and gave her 15 of them. And eventually after I'd played a bunch of games and she handed me back all 15 tokens. So when she goes in there, it's hard for her to peel that money out. It's easy for her to go to the front counter and be like, yeah, I'll take a wristband and go play whatever she wants. But handing that money over at every single game, I think it's a mental thing. It's like one of those things where something might be $9,999 instead of $10,000 because it triggers a different level in your brain. So I think it's something like that. If you play like a classic or something that's, you know, an ass kicker and you just had a say the whole game lasted a minute long, it's like, damn, I just burned that dollar in like one minute. So it's like, I don't want to do that over and over. I'll be, you know, I'll be gone in 20 minutes. Not that that happens to everybody, but I do think for people that aren't as deep into the hobby, it definitely encourages them to play more games It's because they aren't worried about spending more money because they've already paid that flat fee.
    68:51
    That's right. And that's our business model, which, of course, is modeled after Pinball Palace, a business model. So it's to get people hooked on it. And if they're hooked on it, then we can build a reputation over time. That's one probably advantage that I have is I am very new to pinball. So in traveling to as many places as we've been to, there are a lot of them that, you know, I don't want to talk bad about it in any places, but a lot of them don't keep up their games. And I think people just get used to that. And so as being new to pinball, I didn't know. I've come from the mechanic world where everything has to be perfect or you've got unhappy customers. So, you know, I try to make these games perfect all the time, and I didn't realize that everybody, except they tell me all the time, is that they're so used to expecting less, you know what I mean? So the operator locally to me, man, all his games are just trash. Everything's just filthy. Like the last time I saw Godzilla, the whole like center area of the play field, you couldn't even see the artwork. It was just black. Yeah, the worst I've ever seen was in, I can talk about this place because they've gone out of business now, but the worst we've ever seen went to Gatlinburg and there was a pinball museum there. And we walked in the door, I thought it was a joke, they had an amazing selection, but their games were crap. But anyway, we walked in the door and you go to pay the $20 or whatever and the lady says, well, anything that's, it says it's a pinball museum. And she says, it's a pinball museum, and anything that works is part of the arcade part, and anything that doesn't is part of the museum part. And we were like, hee, hee, hee, and then we got in there, and nothing was working. You couldn't even, I played like an Aerosmith premium, and literally when it got to the upper playfield, I couldn't see it. It was so black, I couldn't see, I didn't know where the ball was. Yeah. It was crazy. That's the worst I've ever seen. And then a month later, I think they were out of business. That kind of reminds me of this place in Orlando.
    71:01
    The other pinball palace. It's called Pinball Palace as well. Not to be confused with the one in Brunswick. No, that's Ovita, Florida. Their games are perfect, man. The one in the mall?
    71:14
    Oh, no. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. It's called Pinball Palace. Okay, the one in Ovita has a different pinball lounge. No, I'm sorry. No, Pinball Island is nice. Yes, the Pinball Palace I think is in Deezerland, isn't it? Yeah, it's in the mall in Deezerland. It's a shit show. But I was trying to tell a guy, I was just trying to help him, not that I try to go around bossing people around in an arcade or anything, but the guy was beating on the fucking DMD on the front of Baywatch, beating the hell out of it, And because the TMD was kind of like screwing up or whatever, flickering. And I was just like, you know, you can like a lot of times you can just reseat the connector and it'll go back to normal. Not always, but sometimes. And he's like, nah, man, I've been doing this for years. He's like, you just got to beat on it for a minute. I'm like, okay. Oh, my.
    72:12
    Well, carry on, sir. You do beautiful work. You know, the crazy thing is to me is like when they're really, really just filthy. You're like, I hate if you're not going to fix them. I mean, how long does it take to just take a rag to the big parts? You know what I mean? The big sections. Yeah, some people just don't care. I mean, it's like the guy in Savannah. He just doesn't care. Hell, he put a game in my town in Richmond Hill at the pizza joint. And I went to pick up a pizza a few weeks ago and I was like, oh, shit, they got a Simpsons pinball party. And I had a $10 bill on me, so I was like, fuck, I guess I'll get some change in play. I played one game. I put the rest of that change in my pocket and took it with me because that game played like garbage.
    73:00
    I tell you what, though, man, we did, like I mentioned, we'd go into Tennessee. Tennessee represents, man, most of the places we went. Yeah, I've heard that. The games were clean and for the most part working. We even went to Game Galaxy and Game Terminal mixed up now. So if you ever want to go on like a pinball vacay, hit the Nashville area because in Nashville there's Game Terminal, 104 or so pinball machines, and beautiful, but they're token play. So one to two tokens. Tokens are a dollar a piece. And except for the weird one I thought was kind of weird, but I guess it's kind of to keep the game play down. Big Lebowski was five. Five dollars to play Lebowski. Wow. That's on that. But yeah. But anyway, so also 30 or 40 minutes or so away from that is Game Galaxy. They have like 189 games and that's free play. You pay $20 at the door, or they have the newest games, the newest five or six games. So Beetlejuice, Evil Dead, or maybe it's the most popular, I don't know, Evil Dead, Winchester, Mystery House, Dune.
    74:16
    Those are to play. They call those premium games. So if you want a premium pass, which includes all 189 pinball machines, plus every bit as many video games, And you want to play those, it was another $10. So, of course, I did that. And that was amazing because it was the first time I ever got to sit down and play Bedelejuice, Evil Dead, Winchester Mystery House with nobody standing behind me, nobody in front of me, nobody on either side of me. And, you know, hot lap them as many times as I wanted because nobody, I guess nobody else in there bought the premium pass. So it was awesome, man. I really got to put some time on that. Have you gotten to play one of those yet, Winchester? Yeah, I was fortunate enough. They had a private room at a Texas Pinball Festival. Well, they had one on the floor. Yeah, they had one on the floor, too. I just never went over there. But we got invited to the private room, so you'd go in there and there's nobody in front of you and it's nice and quiet and you could play as much as you want. So I got to play that a lot. I got to play Dune a lot. I didn't really care for Dune much. I did like Winchester a lot, though. Yeah, well, I like Dune. Did you get the worm? Get the sandworm activated? I don't know. I thought Dune was fun. I think a lot of it's just like I really don't care for that theme at all. I don't like the movies. So I think that kind of fed into it a little bit. It's not like I don't watch the movies. I don't like the movies.
    75:47
    Well, so yeah, I'm right there with you because I put Dune in the ballpark now of Pokemon. Yeah, I I'm actively annoyed by the Pokemon stuff. Oh, yeah, me too. It's like I dislike it. It's not that I'm not into it. I dislike it. So it makes me really not want it regardless of the layout. Dune, I thought was an OK movie. Yes, it's OK. You know, it's not one. See, that's how I'm with Fallout. So Fallout, like I'm not a crazy fan. I don't dislike it. I'm just not like a massive fan. But if the game, if Elwin puts out a really good Fallout game, I'd probably still be a buyer just because like, you know, the show's all right. And when the next season comes out, I'm going to watch it because I'm caught all up with other two seasons. So I guess. Yeah, well, I mean, but I like I didn't care for Dune so much, the movie, but I feel I really do enjoy the game. I tried to watch Dune like five times and I just fell asleep every time. And I'm like, all right, if you fall asleep that many times, it's it's not for you. Yeah, I think it's just a bunch of people living on a planet with drugs and people coming to take their drugs. That's what I gather from it. But I get it. I know a lot of people like Dune. That's wonderful. I'm just waiting for them to really build something I want. I should have got a Winchester. My dealer asked me when they went on sale. He's like, do you want one? And I passed up like an idiot, which I was kind of already into it because I like kind of those creepy, Dirty haunted house horror type themes. So I was already I didn't know what the Winchester house was at that time, but I was like, oh, haunted house. Cool. Oh, I saw the Winchester movie. It's called Winchester. Yeah, I've seen it. I was aware of it. Same thing. I was offered it the day it released and we were like, I looked at it, I don't know anything about that. Maybe we'll pick it up some point in the future. I guess I should have looked into it more because I just want to do not sell at all. So I was like, not even like worried about it. I was like, if it's cool, I'll get one later. That's the same thing I thought about Evil Dead. And yeah, Winchester was the same thing. I'm definitely not, you know, 10 grand in on it now. But I tell you, after really sitting down and putting some time on it, that is going to be their Godzilla, I believe, because that game is just incredible. I like the fact that... Did it crash on you? That's the only problem we had at TDF. Like, it crashed over and over and over. They've made, I think, a couple code drops here very recently. That's good. But no, I didn't see it crash at all. They kept blaming it on me because I was like nudging like crazy and they're like, you broke it again. I'm like, I didn't do shit.
    78:31
    Yeah, well, I love the way you hit the ball in the same place three separate times and it goes somewhere completely different and in a couple different spots. I don't know. I just I'm going to have to have one of those probably. I want one. I'm just not going to pay 20 for it. How much were those? Like 12? Like 11, 12 originally? It was between 10 and 12, yeah. But I'm with you. I will not have him. I'll just wait for the next one, man. Yeah, that sucks. But at some point, I'll probably get my hands on one.
    79:05
    All right, my man. Well, we've probably said all there is to say. That's probably about the right length for... Yeah, we're at about an hour and 20. So, I mean, it's been a fun conversation. I know we said we'd get back. What was it? A couple weeks ago. We're like, yeah, we'll do another one next week. And we never did it. But you had an anniversary thing, trip planned. So you got to do that. And I was busy moving games. You know, I did something on the anniversary trip you suggested. I listened to the JBS show. Oh, man. I appreciate you turning me on to that. That was fun. Oh, Jamie's my buddy, man. That's a good. I love this podcast. I like hearing them. I like the other guys kick him in the dick. They just kind of mess with him a little bit, you know, and that was my favorite part, to be honest with you. They're making fun of Jamie? Well, I mean, I don't say making fun of him, but he wanted to do something. Giving him shit. Yes, yes, I enjoyed that. That was fun. It was a really good dynamic. I don't know how they've figured out. I feel like Jamie is the Joel of, like, Triple Drain has Joel. Well, the Roundtable has Jamie. I don't know how these people figure out how to do three people on a podcast. We tried it one time, and it just did not work, man. Everybody just talking over each other. By the time you got – like if I had something to say about what you and somebody else were talking about, by the time I got to say it, it was irrelevant. The conversation around the moon is somewhere else. I don't know how they pull it off, but everybody seems to be able to pull it off but us. You got to jump in there quick.
    80:33
    Yeah, so the listeners don't even know what we're talking about. Me and Eric and Don recorded an episode, I don't know, a month or so ago. And it just did not work out. So the public will never hear that episode, unfortunately. And you people out there are better for it. It just didn't work. Actually, I don't even think it exists. I think it deleted it. So it is gone forever. And I enjoyed Don's show, and I love doing this one. But the three of us just didn't work. It's all right. We'll all go hang out maybe at Halloween Horror Nights. I've got to look into that. So we'll do that here this week. Now it's a new house. Hellraiser. Yep. Hellraiser. And then we got killer clowns from outer space as a scare zone. So in. So, yeah, should be fun. Anyway, well, I'll talk to you next time, Eric. Proud of my man. Catch you next time. Later.
    81:35
    Keeith Evaluice Keith Evaluice